


Slow Me Down

by itskathybabe



Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor - All Media Types
Genre: Depression, F/M, Movie Spoilers, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-06
Updated: 2015-05-26
Packaged: 2018-03-29 06:43:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 21,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3886282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itskathybabe/pseuds/itskathybabe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They kept warning her about the mysterious patient in the room beside hers. She didn't see what the big deal was.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Cultivate Supportive Relationships

**Author's Note:**

> DO NOT READ UNLESS YOU HAVE SEEN "Avengers: AGE OF ULTRON"

> * * *
> 
>  
> 
> "My pain sucks, I hurt and I ache, and my soul cries every time I try to lift one foot forward only to realize I  _can't._  But his pain seems more important. His tears are a little harder to stomach. So, I guess we'll focus on that instead."
> 
> -Darcy Lewis
> 
> * * *
> 
>  

_Chapter One_

The funny thing about living is that you’re too preoccupied by the idea of dying.

Darcy was never much of a fan for mysteries. She didn’t like thinking about life after death. She felt like she had more than enough time before she had to think about it. That is, until she almost died in Puente Antiguo, decided Political Science was not for her, witnessed the rise and fall of New York City, watched Shield burn from the inside in D.C, get manhandled into safe house, after safe house, after safe house, lagging behind Jane to different countries, and went on to hack it out for S.H.I.E.L.D. after Agent Coulson showed up again in her life to reminded her how much he admired the cut of her jib.

Darcy liked to think that every day spent in the newly improved Stark Tower, surrounded by deadly agents (that could probably kill her with nothing but a ball-point pen) and even deadlier tech, scratched away another seven minutes from her life.

You know, more time spent in the tower, the more minutes you scrape away of your life- kinda like the analogy with smoking cigarettes, only with more guns and treason.

Which brings her to New York City, again, and all its lively, wonderful secrets.

New York City, where every moment spent there made her question her own sanity.

After every crazy cab ride and leery driver, every sleazy subway terminal, every stinky hobo nearly patting her down for change, it made her question her preconceived notion of a long lifetime stretched out ahead of her.

At that very moment, Darcy’s innocent and naïve ignorance toward her mortality was seriously gnawing at her forefront the longer she stared at the giant, greasy, mustard and relish smothered hot dog she just purchased at the stand outside Headquarters for $9.50.

If the city’s smog didn’t kill her, this economy would. _Nine fifty for a hot dog? Was she crazy?_

She was on her lunch break. In the few weeks she’d dove headfirst into the city, she still hadn’t really gotten a chance to explore anything further than the few blocks between SI Tower and her new apartment she and Jane were dumped in. She’d moved into her tiny two bedroom, one bathroom place with Jane, and had been corralled into Secret Agent training before she even had a chance to claim the bigger room.

But on S.H.I.E.L.D.’s dime, who gives a rat’s ass if the bedrooms were tiny. It left more room to buy… nine dollar freakin’ _hot dogs_.

People here were nuts, Darcy thought as she sat at the bench outside HQ. A shiny Stark Pad, stolen from Jane’s luggage when she wasn’t looking, was on her lap and ignored in exchange for the unique sights and sounds… and smells… the city street offered her.

Every street, whether you walk three blocks up or six blocks down, was the same, yet completely different. Yellow cabs, black limos, or old dudes brave enough to ride a motor scooter, all were bumper to bumper on the narrow roads, inching dangerously close to one another to push into the next traffic-filled street.

 _And the_ _pedestrians!_ She thought as her fingers clenched around her hot dog. They just jaywalked along the busy streets without a care in the world! The excitement, the jittery feeling of fearlessness these New Yorkers possessed was amazing, and she couldn’t wait until she was walkin’ and talkin’ like a regular ol’ city slicker too.

She could very nearly order her _ko-uh-fee_ with the same intense aloofness many businessmen could at six in the morning. It would take some practice, but she almost got her “ey, asshole! I’m walkin’ ‘ere!” snap down pat.

Darcy was about to take her very _first_ bite of NYC’s finest- straight out of the first greasy corner vendor she could find. The relish on her dog looked watered down, and the mustard seemed just shy of _crusty_ , but eating a street-dog in New York City was something on her long Bucket List, and she’d muscle through with it if she had to.

The hard, stale bun was so close to her taste buds she could feel each fiber of baked lard and dough right on her tongue. She could _taste_ the broiled, salty meat through the hot vapors with every inhale.

She opened her mouth wide for her first bite when a low, rapidly loudening whistle of wind reverberated off the buildings around her, and _bang!_

“Wha- wha’s happenin’?!” Darcy shot up like a rocket, spilling her lunch’s juices all over her brand new grown-up skirt. She looked up to find the waspy and previously zoned out New Yorkers running around like headless chickens, her ear drums boomed with the tandem shouting of a hundred startled civilians.

Instinct, brought on by the trauma in Puente Antiguo brought Darcy to her knees and off the bench in half a second. As she scrambled from the bench and dived to the ground, the skin of her knees split on impact, warm blood quickly trickled down her legs. She was mortified to find her mind mourning the fallen hotdog in front of her, face down on the grey concrete, yellow mustard and lime green relish splattered around it like the most unholy of crime scenes.

“Fuckers!” She spat lowly, staring at the hot dog before another loud “ _BANG! BANG!”_ brought her to her senses. She took a minute to grieve those lost nine bucks before her few weeks of training kicked in. Darcy reaches for her newly issued gun strapped to the inside of her ruined skirt.

“You wanted adventure. You’re gonna get it- kicking and screaming.” She grumbles as she kicked off the cement and points her small, never before fired Glock shakily toward where the gunshots came from.

Cars were screeching, bumpers grinding together in an effort to get away from the rapid fire coming from seemingly nowhere. She caught sight of a group of armed men run into the street and onto the sidewalk to get away from the few firing shield agents.

“Get out of the way!” She screams at the running civilians and ran towards the chaos in the middle of the street.

“Run!” Her voice was hoarse against the rude noise of traffic and screaming people. At the edge of her field of vision was something she can’t quite make out, something coming toward her at impossible speed.

She turns toward it, and in that split second she realizes that there is a little girl in its path. She screams in surprise, letting her gun drop to the ground. She hears a shout, which may have been her own. The taxi was close enough she could see the frightened driver inside, his horn blaring desperately, the little girl was running now, but not fast enough-  the old man’s face morphed in terror as he clenched his steering wheel, understanding he was about to hit whether he stomped on his breaks or not- the small girl screamed.

Darcy leaped. The last thing she remembered were the frightened eyes of the little girl, the child’s scraped palms, and the shock of her eyes mirroring Darcy’s own. There was an explosion as everything shattered.

And then there was nothing.

                                                                        _Пиетро x Дарси_

“ _Darcy? Darcy can you hear me? Agent Lewis?_ ” A soft voice shook her awake. She tried to answer, her mouth was full of cotton, and it felt like she hadn’t had a drink of water in days. Her eyes squint against a harsh bright light overhead, the florescence were buzzing over the obnoxious sound of a machine beeping on her left.

Her fingers move first, a small twitch, but judging by the quick gasp on her right side from the woman speaking to her, it was more than she must have accomplished in a while.

She opens her eyes.

She tried to focus on something, the itchy cotton feel of a thin blanket over her body, the strange itch on her nose, a numbing feeling in her belly. Her fingers move again, then her hand, but the sharp poke of a needle at her elbow kept her from moving her arm entirely.

She couldn’t focus on one thing at a time, her body reeling from 0 to 60 in less than the second it took to open her eyes. The beeping in the room grew louder.

A small woman was standing over her, frantically reaching for something over Darcy’s head behind the headboard. Her red hair was pulled back in a low bun, not a strand out of place. Her glasses were falling over her nose and she watched her with eyes like a hawk’s, a sound of a low _beep_ of a button being discretely pressed.

“Wh-” Darcy tried but her throat was sandpaper. The skin of her jaw burned from the short movement and if she opened her mouth too wide the muscles in her throat contracted painfully. A small straw was put into her mouth and it was difficult to even take a small pull.

“Don’t speak.” Said the woman in a brisk tone, Darcy assumed her to be the nurse or a doctor, “You’ve suffered a mild case of laryngeal edema. It’s when a lowered concentration of plasma proteins decreases the osmotic pressure, permitting the passage of abnormal amounts of fluid out of your blood vessels and into your tissue spaces. The Doctor is scheduled to check up on that later in the day...” the explanation went right over Darcy’s head, especially after just waking up, and the woman must have realized it, because she stopped speaking, a mild look of fondness overtaking her older features.

“After all the other injuries you’ve sustained it was low on the To Do list.” She must have seen the question in Darcy’s eyes, because she continued. “You’ve dislocated your spine in several places, if you didn’t receive the care you’ve gotten you could have become a quadriplegic for life... The shrapnel imbedded into your skin was difficult to remove and you were in surgery for nearly twelve hours. You almost died three times but you kept coming back. You’re a fighter, Agent Lewis.” The woman smiled, almost proud in a way that made it seem like she cared very deeply for Darcy- but she’d never met this lady before in her life. “I’ve been your primary caregiver your entire stay here at the Avenger’s Facility, you’re vitality is well known in these halls.”

This time Darcy definitely did try to open her mouth, but the sharp pain stabbing a path through her tonsils and down her esophagus had her biting her lip hard enough to split.

“Careful!” The nurse/doctor said sharply again, revealing a tissue paper from out of nowhere and dabbing it at Darcy’s mouth. “Your injuries have been sustained for the most part, but the one in a billion surgery you’ve warranted will not be extended to shallow cuts and bruises. Dr. Cho is charitable, but she isn’t stupid.”

Her conscious was starting to clear up. Understanding the woman became easier the longer she spoke.

Doctor Cho, Darcy had heard of her before, a genius woman on her way to earning the Nobel Peace Prize in Science and Medicine. She’d invented a biochemical that grows flesh, she could heal a wound in minutes with the same fast acting rate of a Super Serum minus all the side effects. Whatever injuries Darcy had, she assumed it needed a lot of tissue regrowth to have someone as prestigious as Doctor Cho show up to play.

“You broke nearly every bone in your body, and what’s more, you should be paralyzed from the neck down the way you spine had been hyper-extended. Can you feel your legs?”

Darcy started at the direct question, the woman’s eyes bored into her for any signal truth. She tried to move her toes but shock coursed through her as she realized she couldn’t.

She couldn’t feel the itchy blanket on her toes, she didn’t feel cold through the thin material like her upper body did.

She stared down at the lumps on the bed, willing her mind to make her legs move, a toe curl, anything.

Her breathing began picking up speed, the heart monitor on her left grew louder and louder. Her eyes prickled in fear and exhaustion.

“That’s what I thought.” She sighed, almost dismayed, but not shocked, by the lack of response from Darcy’s legs. She was quiet when she spoke again. “The price is small compared to your life, Agent Lewis… You’ll need intense rehabilitation for the next couple of years if you ever want to walk again...” The woman grew uncertain, her face set grimly. “You should have died, you know? You would have died if you didn’t have the most capable team of scientists fighting for your life.” The woman pressed what might have been more pain killers into the saline drip connected to Darcy’s vein.

Her heart began to calm. The promise of someday walking again settled the smallest sliver of peace over the ensuing panic attack. Fighting against the pain, Darcy’s rasped what she could. “Hhh... do-?”

The nurse remained silent for a moment, understanding the unfinished question. How did she know she might be able to walk again? How did she have so much faith in whatever miracle the doctor performed? How did this even happen? She remembered the taxi, she remembered the impact, but thankfully she couldn’t remember the pain- not right now.

Trying not to look into Darcy’s eyes, they turned sad. “The boy occupying the room beside yours. He had seven bullets go straight through him. One had gone through the spleen, two through his right lung… one even nicked his heart so severely his internal bleeding is what killed him before he even had a chance to bleed out.” She stopped speaking. Looking up and around the room before moving closer toward Darcy, leaning in as if to tell her a secret. “But between us,” she whispered, “there has been speak that he might wake up soon. Hopefully. He seems like a nice boy.”

The brow she tried to raise at the woman was left unmoved as the pain in her skin tightened her flesh.

“He sleeps peacefully. Anyone that can sleep in peace must be good.” The woman straightened up, grabbing her clipboard once more. “My name is Terri. This is a pager,” she removed a small blue device from her pocket and put it into Darcy’s hand, closed her fingers around it, and let go. “It sends a notification to my cell phone, press it and I’ll be here as soon as I can.” She gave a small smile, genuine happiness shone through her blue eyes. “I’m really glad you woke up,” she whispered, and left the room without a trace except for the smooth device sitting in her limp palm.

Darcy closed her eyes and prayed her thanks for her life to whichever deity deigned to listen.

                                                                        _Пиетро x Дарси_

She had been in an induced sleep for over a month after the initial surgery, and a month after the day she met Terri marked the end period of her intensive care recovery. It had taken longer than normal to stay awake long enough without the threat of falling back into unconsciousness after more than five minutes of clarity.

Jane had been in and out, so had Erik apparently, though Darcy couldn’t remember most of the visits, stopping when they could from work to visit their ailing best friend and pseudo daughter. Her only living family left, no one had been more devastated than Jane when she found out Darcy was nearly killed, died three times on the operating table, then brought back to life again through the sheer will to stay alive long enough to eat a New York hot dog for the first time.

It was tough. For someone so lively, free spirited, and literally running from one project to the next, to be condemned to bed rest for weeks on end with nothing but bad cable and a shitty view out her window to keep her entertained.

Then, thank God, about a week ago, she had been given a wheel chair.

She was still fragile enough that she couldn’t start her rehab to get her legs moving, but hot tempered enough to threaten to tase everyone’s asses into the next dimension if she couldn’t leave her room for a few hours a day.

It was late August now, about the time she would have been beginning more advanced training to level up from her Class 1 rank in Shield.

In the minute between laying on her bed like an invalid and sitting on the wheelchair, Darcy had to press a special button on her bed to call in a male nurse, or someone strong enough to carry her from the bed and transfer her to the chair without dropping her.

It was mortifying, and a little sexy when Jesse, a tall dark and handsome Hospital clerk, picked her up as if she weighed nothing, and carefully set her down on the chair.

“Thanks, Jess.” She said in false cheerfulness. She wasn’t sure if he could see through her absolute loathing at needing him to move her around, but if he could she appreciated his effort on keeping his thoughts to himself. She pat him on his impressive bicep in thanks. He folded a blanket over her legs, whether to cover up the fact that she couldn’t move them, or to keep her from getting cold, she wasn’t sure, but she appreciated it nonetheless.

He huffed a small chuckle. “Any time, Agent Lewis.” He opened her bedroom door for her, and with a huff of exertion, she wheeled herself to freedom.

“Agent Lewis.” She scoffed slyly, unabashedly staring at his pecks through his form fitting scrubs. “You know what I like to go by.”

“Don’t know how many times I’m gonna tell you this, Darce.” Jesse supplied with an eye roll, “I ain’t callin’ you ‘sexy pants.’”

“But you just did!” She crowed with a brilliant grin, using her hands to tangle into the sheets. As Jesse laughed, she used the distraction to pinch her thigh harshly under the blanket, poking and pulling at the softened muscle for any feeling.

There was none.

His eyes were bright with mirth, but his mouth quickly formed into a deep frown. “Quiet down in the hall okay? Your neighbor’s still sleeping.”

Darcy rolled her eyes.

Her mysterious neighbor- Mister Shot-Seven-Times-and-Lived, was still in his coma. There was no news that he’d ever wake up, but Terri kept her in the loop, always bringing in new gossip on what was going on in the halls. There weren’t many patients on Doctor Cho’s floor, and though Darcy had never met her, she’d assumed a facility that racked in so many possibly-injured soldiers and agents would be lining up at the door to get a dose of the good Doctors mojo.

“He’s always sleeping. He’s been sleeping for months.” She banged on the light blue wall beside her, “ _Wake up!_ ”

“Darcy! Knock it off!” Jesse hissed, swatting her hand away from knocking on the wall again. “God.” He huffed in exasperation- it’s how everyone but Terri had been feeling about her the days after her vocal chords had been fixed. “Can I trust you alone for a second while I take care of some paperwork?”

Oh Jesse. Sweet, naïve, but beautiful, Jesse.

“Of course.” She lied, her eyes widening sweetly. She folded her hands on her useless lap, and tried to pretend the unpresent feeling of weight on her thighs didn’t bother her. “I’m just gonna roll up and down the halls, anything to get me out of my stuffy room. Not even an iPad in there? Really?” she scoffed, already wheeling away in the opposite direction from Jesse. “Billion dollar facility and not a hint of courtesy for their best patient.”

She heard his shoes squeak against the clean linoleum, and she waited until he turned the corner toward the nurse’s station at the end of the long hall to double back toward her room.

Her home for the past couple months, had been room 6. Residing in the mysterious room number 5 had to have been the secret mystery patient everyone seemed to whisper about.

‘The miracle’ they called him. Personally, she would have gone with ‘the boy who lived.’ If nothing she was a hard core Potter head, and this kid seriously seemed to have a knack for eluding death.

The door handle in front of her was so tempting. She knew none of the doors had locks, her own bedroom wouldn’t even close all the way unless someone with a special access code could override it to shut when she was alone.

She checked the halls again, uncaring if she was caught, but still feeling like she was about to do a very bad thing and enter the coma-kid’s personal space.

Fuck it. With a shrug she opened the door. She tensed for a silent alarm to go off, for nurses to rush at her at the intrusion, anything but the quiet _errrk_ as the door opened wider.

She wheeled in. The room was dark, the overhead lights weren’t on and the ever present of buzzing fluorescence were nonexistent in here.

There was a soft overhead light over the bed, the only piece of furniture in the room other than a bare nightstand.

She had floor to ceiling windows in her own room along the length of the furthest wall, and she assumed the same was be extended into this room, but dark paneled curtains were drawn along the wall, making everything dark except for the two spotlights above his bed.

There were no machines around the bed, no wires poking from his body, no heart monitor beeping rudely. There was what looked like a defibrillator hooked up against the wall by the headboard, but other than that there was nothing. The guy could have been sleeping in a hotel room for all he knew.

She wheeled further in, turning around as best she could in her chair to close the door in case someone happened to walk by.

“Well, this isn’t what I was expecting.” She whispered into the quiet room, unable to handle silence so well after practically living in it since her stay began. “You’re kinda cute.” She said in surprise as she reached his side of the bed. The first thing about him she noticed was his nose. Like a button, it pointed upward and alluded sophistication to juxtapose his tangled mess of strange blonde hair. The silvery blonde curls seemed illusory and he must have had brown hair at some point because it had grown through the platinum blonde locks. It curled softly over his ears, and shifted with every one of his slow breaths.

She felt intrusive, watching him for all intents and purposes, sleep.

“Sorry about the seven bullets, dude.” She fiddled with her blanket, watching his chest rise and fall. His legs were long, thin, and hidden under his very own itchy blanket. “The bedding here sucks, but the food’s pretty good. Something to look forward to if ya wake up.”

There was no chart at the end of the bed, but she assumed the tech in his room worked just like hers, so she wheeled herself toward the edge of his bed and searched for the blinking blue button she’d familiarized herself with. The only sound in the room was their breathing and the squeak of rubber on tile.

At the edge of his blankets, over the metal of his bed frame, a small button blinked. She pressed it, and immediately a screen across the room lit the room up in white and blue. **Maximoff, Pietro** in bold black were displayed on the holograph in front of her. His patient identification number, social security code and birth date were indicated below.

… _ruptured femoral artery… severed aorta… torn pulmonary artery… three emergency Intracardiac injections of Adrenaline… collapsed lungs L &R…_ _broken R femur…_

“Jeez, man. You really know how to party.” She chuckled to herself, but it was hollow. This room was depressing her, and after her constant acts of cheeriness, it was a bit strange. She shut off his patient’s chart and the room was once again drowned in darkness.

She stayed quiet now and looked around the bare walls for any sign of life. Dozens of roses came every week for her, each bouquet a different color from Erik. Posters from her unlived in apartment now decorated her space, courtesy of Jane. Her own room had various crayoned pictures, _Thank You_ , _Love You_ , and _Get Well Soon_ cards were lined along her bathroom mirror. Gift baskets were delivered to her bedside, filled with cheeses and wine she wouldn’t enjoy, candy she wished she could, from the family of the child she’d saved.

Her name was Emily, and in the last card she drew Darcy, she wrote she wanted to grow up and be just like her. It made Darcy cry for hours as guilt spurned in her gut from the split second of regret she felt for her useless legs.

She was no hero, she joined Shield because it seemed cool and her only option left to take after dropping out of school. Darcy was scum, she knew it, so she pinched her legs again, this time until her nails cut through skin and the only movement her legs made were from the long, rolling beads of blood dripping into her sleeping gown. She retracted her nails from her leg, fixed her blanket and wiped the small bead of blood inside her gown.

“What the hell are you going in here?” Jesse’s familiar voice interrupted, and Darcy jumped in surprise as he quickly stalked into the room toward her. “You’re not authorized to be in here! How'd you even get in?” he whispered shouted.

“Why are you whispering, the dude’s in a coma-”

“Do you know who this is?” he demanded, still whispering, fumbling over the end of the bed and hiding the blinking button from her sight.

She pretended like she hadn’t memorized the kid’s social security number just moments ago, just because she was a nosy shit and couldn’t understand most of the doctor-speak on the chart anyway. “No, who is he?”

“None of your damn business, that’s who.” He took the handles of her wheelchair and steered her away from the guy on the bed. Pietro Maximoff. “Look, Darce. I let you do whatever you want. You were an at risk patient up until a month ago, and you have more reign over this floor than most of the doctors do. You’re that stubborn.”

“Thank you.” 

He gave her a stink eye, leading her towards a public indoor garden area she’d already gotten bored of days ago. “But if any unauthorized person is caught in there… _especially_ someone I was supposed to be watching… I can lose my job. You understand?”

She sighed. Yeah she understood. She turned away from him to stare at the white lily pad that had recently started blossoming out of season.

“Sorry, Jesse.”

He harrumphed, taking a seat at his usual post and whipping out his iPhone to pass the time with.

“I mean it. I’m so sorry. How will you ever trust me again? How will I trust myself again? I’m an animal. I’m an indecent human being and I don’t deserve your compassion!” she wailed dramatically, clutching her heart over the soft robe Jane bought her from home.

“Stick a sock in it, Darcy.” Jesse rolled his eyes, but he was smiling again, and she'd thus completed her mission.

She smiled too, turning back to the blooming flowers, and wondered why Pietro didn’t have any to brighten up his own room.

                                                                        _Пиетро x Дарси_

“The ringleader was caught yesterday.” Jane said over her tiles. They were playing scrabble, a new addition to the giant stack of board games she’d been bringing along on her visits. Some lame sitcom was on mute across from them. The day was pretty cloudy, and through the open windows, her room was darkened. Her bedroom was left opened and a few nurses were seen walking up and down the halls.

“Hmm?” she pretended not to know.

“The men with the gun that tried to shoot up New York two months ago. His little gang were caught.” She put down an M and a U, spelling something Darcy had never even heard of in her life.

“What the fuck is a ‘muzjik’? Did you forget how to spell music or something?” She sighed, looking up Jane’s word and tallying up a total of 128 points. “Fuckin hate playing this game with you,” she grumbled.

She ignored her, using her time during Darcy’s turn to stare her down. “You’re getting a bit thinner, have you been eating well?”

“Isn’t that my line? I was your caretaker first.” She smirked, rotating her tiles to figure out how to best a 128. “The food’s good, and if I’m losing weight then it’s probably the medication.”

“Which are?” she prodded. Darcy didn’t answer, choosing to peer around her bedroom wall and peek into the halls. “How are you not going stir crazy in here?”

Darcy grimaced, “I _am_. I’ve asked Terri ten times, but she won’t tell me why I’m being kept here.”

“Have you started rehab yet?” She’s the only one that doesn’t look down at Darcy’s unmoving legs, and she didn’t know whether to feel grateful or annoyed for the fact.

“Nope. Another week to go.” They remained silent then, and Jane won the game after another two turns, beating out Darcy by two hundred points. “I better get going.” She sighed, getting up from the bed and checking her wrist watch. “One of my new interns has a bad habit of falling asleep behind the computer if I’m not there to make her focus.”

“New intern,” Darcy scoffed. “Traitor.”

Jane gathered her things, but Darcy had a feeling as to what was about to come from her mouth. “Have you heard from Ian?” she asked quietly.

She looked away, pretending to focus on putting all the tiles into the small silver packet. “Nope.”

“Has he at least called?”

“Nope.” Ian, her boyfriend, or she assumes ex-boyfriend since she hadn’t heard from him in over a month, dipped as soon as he realized his girlfriend was a little more baggage than he’d originally signed on for.

Waiting a couple years for your girlfriend to _maybe_ walk again was a pretty big burden and she didn’t blame him.

Jane however… “That fucking asshole.” She spit. Hiking her purse with fire in her eyes. “I’ll give his new boss a call. If that shit doesn’t call you by the end of the week he won’t have a job in _any_ science department, if I get my way.” She stomped over to Darcy, leaning over the sheets to give her a sweet kiss on her head. “You’re brave and beautiful and you don’t deserve someone like that anyways.” She whispered.

Darcy was left alone. Jane’s words echoing long past since she’d left. She didn’t cry, she wasn’t sad. But the weight on her heart was heavy.

She looked down at her legs again where they were positioned Indian style over her sheets. She gripped her knee and lifted her thigh from beneath her right leg, straightening them out one by one on her own.

No, she didn’t cry, but she wanted to.

                                                                        _Пиетро x Дарси_

She couldn’t sleep that night. She lay on her bed, tossing and turning, and her sheets had fallen off the mattress with all the movement. She sat up, bed head a tangled mess, and she was cold as shit.

She rang her buzzer for Jesse or whichever nurse or technician happened to be on duty.

She always felt bad for calling someone to her room, it might have been almost two in the morning but they were still probably busy.

Her door creaked open and a sliver of light creeped in from the hall.

“Can I help you?” a young woman her age asked politely.

“Hey!” she croaked groggily. “Sorry, but my blankets fell.” She pointed to her legs. “I’d get them but, uh,” she tailed off with an awkward chuckle. The nurse smiled, her eyes a little baggy and she seemed like she could use some rest.

“Not a problem.” She walked over, picked up the thick duvet Jane smuggled in for her comfort, and brought them up to her waist. “Anything else I can get for you?” Darcy shook her head, and she was left all alone in the darkness again. But this time, she couldn’t go back to sleep. She was wide awake.

She sighed, annoyed.

If this were three months ago, she’d just get up from bed, maybe go to the kitchen and grab a snack.

And now she had to pee. Darcy sighed, pressed the button again, this time _definitely_ feeling guilty as the girl walked in again, a slightly annoyed glint through her cheery expression.

“Yes?”

“I, uh, kinda have to pee.”

“Let me get Mike to help you into your wheelchair.”

Darcy waited for her to get ‘Mike.’ Her fingers tapping impatiently against her hip. She didn’t have to pee that bad, but the slight tingling was there and it’s better to be safe than sorry in the middle of the night. God knows, she won’t feel it if she peed herself.

Mike came in. He was an older dude with a military buzz cut. He walked stiffly, like he had a stick up his ass. There was a gun on his hip, and his boots were pretty sturdy looking. Apparently his hair wasn’t the only thing military about him.

“Ma’am?” He asked politely.

She pointed sheepishly to the wheelchair parked in front of the round table by the window. Mike walked over, picked it up instead of wheeling it over like a normal person, and parked it in front of her bed. Without warning he hefted her up by her midsection and she rose with a squeak.

Fuckin rude ass- he dropped her in her chair and if she didn’t have to pee before, all that manhandling sure got her bladder going now.

“Nice. You got a real gentle touch there, Sally.” She sassed, wheeling herself toward the bathroom. Mike huffed behind her, and she closed the door in his face.

This was the hard part.

Darcy, a 24 year old independent woman, allowed them to toss her around. I mean, how much could she really do without the use of her legs… but she absolutely drew the line at having someone in the bathroom with her. So they installed handlebars for her, a nifty retractable table that clipped to the edge of her wheelchair, to the edge of her toilet.

She lifted her knees and removed her underwear, then straddled the retractable table, used what little upper body she had and worked her way across it, keeping hold of the handlebars between the walls. She straddled the toilet, facing the opposite way that everyone usually sits, and did her business.

She sat there, her shoulders hunched over themselves and looked down at her bare thighs.

There were silvery criss-crosses all along the skin of her right thigh where she had poked her nails through. The flesh had healed, but the emotional wounds of watching your skin split open before your very eyes only to not feel anything hadn’t left her.

So, she stopped. Self-harm was a huge no no, she had the presence of mind to know that, so she quit it before she got in too deep. She sighed, finishing and reaching for the toilet paper that had been graciously installed into a dispenser in front of her face.

She flushed, hefted herself backwards onto the retractable table and pressed a green button on the side. The table began moving backwards, back into her wheelchair, and she deposited herself onto it with a tired _ouff_.

Turning the chair around and exiting the bathroom, she wasn’t all that shocked to find Mike gone, her bedroom door left wide open. Definitely not interested in calling someone to get back into bed, and uncaring if she had supervision or not, she left her room with the intention to head to one of the common areas.

Maybe Simon, a fellow ex-Shield agent that had been admitted last week, was awake. Unlikely.

She wheeled herself down the hall, her arms protesting a bit from the previous exertion in the bathroom, and passed by the ominous door number 5.

It was the middle of the night. It had been a month since she last snuck in there. No one would notice if she just took another peek. Checked out the progress of her fellow neighbor.

That was the neighborly thing to do right?

She turned the handle, once again tensing only to have it open without a problem, and entered.

“Oh shit.” Darcy squeaked, stunned to find someone already in the room.

The girl turned, almost unsurprised to have been intruded upon. Her dark eyes watched Darcy and they were both frozen, staring at one another. The guy, still in his coma, slept between them.

“Sorry! It’s the middle of the night, I didn’t think anyone was here.” She twisted her hands, uncertainly, preparing to wheel herself out and go hide in a hole. “I’ll just, uh, go.”

“No one is supposed to be in here.” The girl’s voice was low and sultry, and Darcy couldn’t place her accent. Almost Romanian, but not.

“I know. So they keep telling me.” She grimaced. “I’ll leave you two alone.”

The girl looked at Darcy, practically stared through her as if trying to read her mind. Before finally, a small smile broke out in her face. “No. Stay.” She turned her face back down toward the guy on the bed and proceeded to ignore Darcy.

Alllright. Creepy girl in black asks me to stay in even creepier coma kid’s room. Right.

The lights were off and it was pitch black, and as soon as she was about to say something about it, the girl reached over and turned on the soft overhead light.

“This is my brother, Pietro.” She introduced unnecessarily, nodding to her brother where he remained unmoving.

She didn't bother mentioning that she knew that already, seeing as how his identity was supposed to be a secret. Darcy waved awkwardly at the guy. “Wuddup."

The girl smiled, her soft chuckle barely a huff. “I am Wanda Maximoff.”

She nodded, “pleasure to meet you, Wanda.”

The girl waited patiently and Darcy almost jumped at her lack of manners, “Oh right! I’m Darcy.”

Wanda smiled. Her silver and black bangles clinking prettily as she waved a hand in greeting.

This is awkward, Darcy thought as they just sat on opposite sides of the bed from one another. Neither were speaking, the only sound was breathing, and she itched to turn around and get the hell outta there.

The girl was a little weird. She stared at her brother intently, snapping her fingers quietly, and then looking back up at Darcy with a strange sort of prodding you could compare to the likes of a bogus mind reader.

“My brother has been asleep for six months.” She said finally, and Darcy jumped.

“I-I’m sorry to hear that.” She said lamely. What do you say to that? “I hope he wakes up soon?”

Wanda smiled a knowing little smirk. “He will.”

Oookay. A little overconfident.

She looked at the guy. It’s been a month since that one time she snuck in to prod her nose in the mysterious patient everyone had been gossiping about.

The whispers have stopped, he wasn’t all that new or exciting anymore, just a tragic life wasted on a bed. She almost felt sort of sorry for the guy.

His hair was longer, less tangled now but judging by the small black comb by Wanda’s arm, she was to blame for that.

“I’m gonna go…” She said finally, after thirty minutes of sitting in silence with the goth girl and sleeping beauty.

“It was a pleasure to meet you, Darcy Lewis.” She smiled, and turned back to watch her sleeping brother. Her fingers clicked louder now, the rhythm of her snapping fingers matching Darcy’s racing heartbeat.

Did she tell that girl her last name? she’s pretty sure she didn’t tell her her last name…

“Right.” She wheeled around and opened the door. “See ya.”

In the room, Wanda smiled, her snapping stopped, and her brother took a deep breath.

                                                                        _Пиетро x Дарси_

 


	2. Challenge Negative Thinking

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> "I don't know how it happened. When his happiness began to feel more important than my own. Is that natural? Is that safe?"
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> -Darcy Lewis 
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“Alright, Agent. The first thing I’m going to teach you is how to gently massage your legs every morning to help stimulate your blood flow.” The chipper Doctor sat in front of Darcy on a yoga mat in the center of a very large room. Darcy had been carried off her chair and onto the floor where she was instructed to lay down with her legs outstretched. “Do you feel any discomfort in the mornings? Any aching pains near your hips or hamstrings?”

Darcy gritted her teeth in mortification as the woman’s hands began to remove her pants after Jesse and two beefy dudes had vacated the room for her routine physical therapy. “I would, but I can’t feel anything.”

The sunny woman froze above her, her expression surprised. “You don’t feel… Can you feel this? How about this?” she pinched Darcy in a few random areas, her ankles, the backs of her knees, her left calf. She shook her head, praying the woman wouldn’t look further up to the healed scars on her thighs.

“Well.” She sighed, gently lowering Darcy’s legs back onto the mat. She got up and looked over Darcy’s chart resting on a randomly placed chair in the center of the empty room. “You’ve been instructed for the same therapies recovering patients have after extensive leg surgery. You must have a pretty hopeful doctor up there on your floor.” She grinned, and Darcy rolled her eyes at yet another person that believed she’d someday walk again.

“What’s your name again?” She asked as the blonde woman began removing Darcy’s slippers and socks, knotting a soft harness around the bottom of her feet and placed the long rope ends by Darcy’s hands.

“Doctor Mendez, but you can call me Christy.” Christy helped Darcy prop herself up into a sitting position so she can carefully watch her instruction on how to massage her legs every morning. Beginning with the toes of each foot and ending with the tops of her inner thighs. If Darcy was into that sort of thing, the whole experience could have been erotic.

The nurses had taught her something similar since her stay at the hospital. Every morning she’d smooth a small drop of lotion onto her thighs, helping her blood travel long her pale legs. If she’d have the ability to feel it, she’d assume she’d be waking up with killer pains of pins and needles sticking into her leg from the inactivity overnight.

Christy pulled the ends of the white rope wrapped around Darcy’s legs and taught her how to lean her body back and lift her legs one at a time, using her arms to lift her entire leg slowly.

“As you’re leaning your body backwards, you’re using your core as well. It’s not much by exercise, but it’ll help keep your muscles active until you can walk again and try proper methods. For now this will do. See? You’re doing great!”

It was difficult, because her knee kept bending without her meaning to. Christy kept her hand on Darcy’s knee and pressed down, keeping the leg straight as Darcy leaned back and lifted as instructed.

She began to break into a sweat after only a minute, her face scrunching with the effort to hold her pose. Her arms and nonexistent abs began quivering with the exertion. Without meaning to, she let go of the white rope holding her legs upward, her heel hit her mat with a loud _plop_ and her leg and stomach jiggled with the jerk. She fell back, trying to catch her breath.

“That was great! Absolutely fantastic! Now the other leg!”

Darcy hated Christy. And she hated this useless exercise. And she hated her legs. And she hated her life. And she hated this fucking hospital. And she hated that wheelchair. And she hated everything.

She huffed, got up with the grace of a bull, and tried again.

Пиетро x Дарси

Tuesdays were Darcy’s favorite. Once in a while Captain America would take an hour of his week to encourage the facility employees or hospital patients to utilize arts and crafts as a way of coping with their various stresses.

Or, as Darcy and the nurses like to call it, Mr. FineAsHell stands by the afternoon sun and sketches.

“Jesus.” Terri, her caretaker, muttered lowly as she wheeled Darcy in for her allotted craft-filled afternoon. “Would you check the arms on that man?”

Darcy whistled lowly. “It’s like looking into the sun,” she agreed. Director Rogers was wearing a white shirt that stretched over his impressive pectorals. His khakis were smeared in blue and green paint, the skin of his arms were covered in pastel oils, and the easel in front of him was a half-finished, hyper realistic portrait of the lake outside the window.

People who worked in the facility, or patients of the hospital, were welcome to join in the Rec room for Art Tuesdays. Today’s students were trying their hardest to mimic his style and copy his brush strokes. Director Rogers set down his brush and took a look around the room, taking a minute to chug down on a bottle of water.

“Check out Miss Simmons,” said Darcy.

Terri tutted with humor, looking over to the elderly woman whom had been admitted for a mild case of heart arrhythmias. Agent Simmons worked in the newly built Arms Control department, in the basement level of the facility. She had applied after proving she was one of the few good agent’s left, despite her age. Director Rogers and everyone in charge seemed to not mind the fact that she was pushing eighty, so long as she was capable at her job.

“Poor coot’ll have a stroke if he keeps it up. Look at him,” Terri muttered as he set his bottle down and wiped a brow, smearing a thin line of green on his forehead. Director Rogers fisted his hands at his hips and stared out into the distance were a lineup of military men were marching outside along the wood’s edge. “Sure don’t make ‘em like that anymore, I’ll tell you that.”

Darcy sniggered, wheeling herself over to a blank easel at the back of the room. “Watch it, Terri. Last I heard, Director Rogers has super hearing.” As if on cue, Rogers turned toward them with a knowing wink. They turned to one another and collapsed into a fit of giggles.

“I’ll leave you here for the afternoon. Make sure you’re back before lunchtime, alright?” Terri said once Darcy settled herself and picked up a few oil pastels. She hummed her acknowledgment and Terri left with a pat on the shoulder.

She liked this time of day. No one really seemed to hover over her here. In the halls or her floor’s common room, the nurses tended to watch her a little too closely, Jesse shadowed her like a ghost. Here, under the ever watchful eye of a lax security guard and Director America for the next hour, she was free to her own devices.

“How you doing, buttercup?” Old man Steward leered charmingly at her from his stool in front of his own easel.

“Steward.” She said shortly, ignoring the creepy ex-special forces. He stayed on for desk duty now-a-days, or so she’s heard.

“They treating you good over there on Cho’s floor? They oiling those wheels of yours? Keeping the tushie comfortable? It’s a miracle they let you out, buttercup.” She smirked but if it wasn’t for the fact he was trying to stare at her tits through her sun dress, she’d be charmed by his concern.

She chucked but chose not to answer him, turning back to her shitty portrait of what’s supposed to be a tree.

“ _Buttercup_?” a humor filled voice joined in. “In my day that was a proposal, Mr. Steward.” He and Darcy both looked up to find Director Rogers standing between their canvases, arms crossed over his impressive chest with humor expressed plainly on his face.

“You tried courting a dame with the word _buttercup_?” Steward rose a brow, “son, you must not have gotten very far with the ladies, huh?”

Steve guffawed good naturedly and looked down with false bashfulness. “Not nearly as far as you’re trying to get here with Miss Lewis. Why don’t you finish your painting and leave her to some peace and quiet, huh?”

Subtle. She chuckled awkwardly, unused to having Director Rogers’ attentions on her. “That’ll be the day I believe in miracles.”

Steve turned to face her, his hands were clasped in front of him and he looked down at his feet as his hands stuffed themselves into his khakis. A school boy act on a man that had killed many and seen hell itself.

“Miracles aren’t as in such short supply as you might think, Miss Lewis.” He smiled meaningfully, as if his words were supposed to mean something to her. He turned around to make his way to the front, stopping every so often to speak with the few other people in the room.

Пиетро x Дарси

There was a huge commotion when she got back to Cho’s floor. Doctors and nurses were running up and down the halls with charts in their hands. People in business suits were running up and down the halls, most aiming for the hallway where her bedroom was, shouting legal nonsense into their cell phones. A horde of nurses were gathered by the nurse’s station, whispering excitedly to one another as they watched the commotion from across the hall.

“What the hell.” She muttered, confused, as a flock of med students and physicians-in-training tried to get past a wall of people in the room beside hers, all standing up on their toes to peek into Pietro Maximoff’s room.

“Let me see!”

“Is he awake?”

“What’s his BPM?”

“Is his blood pressure over-”

“-legalization for a person coming back from the-”

“Doctor Cho will win the Nobel prize for this! The world of Genetics will never be the same!”

“Darcy?” Darcy turned, hearing her name being shout over the loud hubbub. Jane was walking towards her, holding up her usual bag of take-out lunch they shared on Tuesdays. “What the hell is going on?”

She didn’t get a chance to answer before one of the young med students turned around excitedly. “Pietro Maximoff’s woken up from his coma! Doctor Cho has successfully brought the dead back to life!”

Darcy and Jane looked a one another in shock. Jane’s lips were about to ask a question Darcy already knew the answer to. “Just go.” She agreed, and without a second to spare Jane dumped the bags of take-out in Darcy’s lap and began pushing people out of the way, just as excitedly as the others were.

“People! Settle down!” A female’s voice rose over the crowd. Whomever was speaking must have been important, because the rush of silence following the command was quick. “I will hold a ten minute debriefing in our Meeting Room followed by a public announcement from Director Rogers. We want to keep this as low-key as possible, so please, until further information will be released, we ask for all of your upmost discretion in this very private, very life-changing matter. Follow me, please!”

The crowd trailed behind a short woman with a loose bun. She walked with a bit of a limp and a sharp, modern white suit shaped her body in lieu of a lab coat. Jane followed Doctor Helen Cho with hearts in her eyes and a notepad in hand.

“You won’t mind if I just go for a quick second do you?” Jane begged off, already walking backwards with the crowd as they all headed for a bay of elevators.

Darcy rolled her eyes, pretending to think about it. “You’ll leave all the spring rolls for me?”

“You can have them all plus the wontons!”

“You got wontons too!?” She grinned, elated. Itching to dig through the take-out containers and stuff it all down her throat. She held out a fist for Jane and she distractedly bumped it as she craned her neck for another glimpse of the doctor.

“You can have them all! Love you!” Jane called over her shoulder, running to catch up with the reporters, medics, and lawyers waiting by the elevators, listening to Doctor Cho speak.

Darcy turned around, alone at the end of the hall now, and wheeled herself to her bedroom.

The coma-boy’s room was opened, and as she steered by she tied her hardest not to peer in. The bedroom was darkened, and for the first time the sound of a heart monitor echoed from the always quiet room. She paused, veering back quickly and poking her head an inch past the doorframe, not wanting to get caught if the guy actually was awake.

“Darcy Lewis.” A sultry, low voice greeted from behind her. She squeaked, and forgetting her condition, tried to jump around to catch whom had spoken.

Wanda walked around Darcy’s chair, her hair was picked up in a messy ponytail and her red leather jacket was unzipped around a pale and wrinkled dress.

“Oh hey! Heard about your brother! Congrats!”

Wanda smiled softly and brought her fingers to her hair, tucking a loose strand behind her ear. “Thank you. It took us a year. Longer than I’d expected. But bringing the dead back isn’t something that is easily learned. I’m glad he is awake.” She said it as if she’d had a hand in trying to get her brother through his coma. Darcy didn’t question the weird phrasing, choosing to smile and brace her hands on her wheels, ready to dip from the creepy girl’s presence and eat her food in solitude.

Before she could go, Wanda stopped her with a hesitant hand. “If I may ask the favor, since you seemed to have a penchant for visiting my brother unannounced…” she smiled, and it made her look years younger under the heavy dark make-up. Darcy didn’t bother to correct that she’d really only visited the guy twice. “I must go and attend the Doctor’s debriefing. Do you mind keeping my brother company while I am away? He’s sleeping but…” She leaned a little closer, her hair falling into her face, “I do not really trust him alone and he does not like the nurses much.”

Oh, but he’ll like _her_? She questioned internally with a snort. She didn’t know what good she’d be if an unwanted visitor wandered in, she wouldn’t be able to hold them back, but she shrugged anyway, not seeing the big deal. “Yeah, no prob. He’s cute to look at anyways.” Wanda grinned and the sincerity and hopefulness of her smile was enough to make her gut clench.

“You are angel.” She patted her shoulder and walked off, leaving Pietro’s bedroom door wide open.

“You are angel.” Darcy mimicked once Wanda was out of sight. “You are _angel_.” She deepened her tone, trying to recite the same low, sultry accent the girl pulled off effortlessly. She entered the room, speaking quietly so as not to disturb the sleeping guy. She went to the opened windows where a ray of sunshine was beginning to break through a cloudy sky. She put her lunch on the round table and began to peer through the contents. “You _are_ angel _. Angel._ You are.”

“No. I think it is _you._ The angel.” A low voice croaked and Darcy gasped, snapping her head toward the man on the bed. He was sitting up, propped against the headboard by a mountain of pillows. His hair was a mess and it seemed like someone had raked their fingers through it to try and tame the disaster. “You must lower voice more, accentuate the _ahh_. ‘You ahhre an angel.’” His accent was dipped in sex and humor. A lethal combination and she felt for the poor defenseless nurses that had to wake up him for his meds later. With a sleepy croak like that panties were sure to get set aflame.

His wrist was taped and there was a needle through his vein hooked up to a pole dangling a bag of IV fluid beside his bed. He picked at the clear tape on his skin and she knew the itchy discomfort first hand.

Not one to ever miss a beat, she mimicked him. “You ahhre an angel. Hi.” She waved. 

He smiled, though it didn’t reach his eyes. If she looked close enough she could see red welts of what might have been dried tear streaks along his cheeks. He picked at the tape a little harder, and he stared a little too intently at the chair beside her. “Hello.” He said once he’d dragged his eyes away from the empty chair and focused his attention on her again. “What is the name of my babysitter?”

She smirked, nonchalantly pulling out her wonton rolls and dipping it in honey sauce. “Darcy.”

“Darcy.” He repeated, tasting her name, nearly purring it as he closed his eyes slowly. “Where I come from, that means _beautiful_.” He opened them again and they locked on hers, his grin was slow and playful.

“Really?” She rose a brow in disbelief.

“No. But it should.”

She threw her head back and laughed, surprised by the intensity of her humor for his wit and thrilled by his effortless suave. He grinned back instantly.

He was pale, and looked a little sweaty. The dark circles under his eyes were worrisome.

“I do not suppose you’d like to share that.” He nodded to her food. “I have not eaten since I have woken up.”

“And when did you wake up?” she hunched over her food in mock protectiveness.

“Six hours ago.”

She choked back a gasp of shock. “And you’re _this_ chipper? Jeez man, what’s your secret? It takes me a whole hour just to open my eyes after I wake up in the morning.”

“Maybe that’s my superpower.” He whispered mischievously.

Пиетро x Дарси

Wanda promised her she’d be back in a few minutes, but a few minutes turned to two hours, and the sun was due to set any minute now. Nurses had been in and out twice to take his blood samples and check on his vitals, all which seemed to be normal if their satisfied expressions were any indication.

But Darcy wasn’t complaining. Pietro was fun company, but he was currently fighting to keep his eyes open against his exhaustion.

“Go to sleep, dude, you’re about to pass out.” She said from beside him. It hadn’t taken her long to cozy up to him enough to wheel closer to his bedside.

“And miss the beauty of your precious smile? I think not.” He grinned sleazily, but the effect was lost as his eyes slid shut for a long blink before he pried them open again. “I cannot sleep. I have been asleep for _months_. Entertain me.” His voice was soft and almost a little vulnerable. She wished his twin sister wasn’t otherwise occupied by her duties so she could tend to her brother at such a helpless time.

“What do you want to talk about?”

“Tell me something.” His pronounced his _S_ ’s with a slight slur, his dour accent out of place in upstate New York.  “Tell me something personal. I’ll tell you about how my sister and I were part of the Avengers, for a short while. I’ll tell you about how Hawkeye squeals like a priss when he gets punched in the nose.” He had told her his achievements hours ago after she’d long finished her food and the possibility of Wanda arriving in twenty minutes was an acknowledged underestimation. He didn’t tell her what his or his sister’s superpowers were though, he claimed he wanted to keep the mystery alive.

“I can’t walk. Like, ever. The Doctors are hopeful, supposedly they’re waiting on some sort of medication, or super-surgery, and try it on me. I think they’re lying. I don’t think I’ll ever walk again.” She wasn’t as upset about it anymore. It was just a fact of her life now, and there was no use to dwelling on hollow hopes.

Pietro swallowed, suddenly more awake. His legs moved beneath the sheets and she stared a little too intently in sudden jealousy at the insignificant action. He tried to prop himself higher on his bed. He winced when his IV needle jerked with his sudden movement.

“Why do you not believe them? The doctors. They always tell the truth, no? They brought a dead man back to life. They must have been keeping you here for all these months for a reason, no?”

She smirked, “maybe they were just waiting around for you to wake up so you can meet me.”

His laugh was gentle, tinged in exhaustion but his eyes were shining in amusement as he watched her watch the trees sway through the window. “You are something. Whether it is true or not, I am glad it is the case.”

She snorted, amused by his constant need to flirt with her. “Stick a sock in it.”

He frowned. “Stick a sock…? In what?”

It was her turn to laugh at him as she began to explain the idiom, which turned into a back and forth debate over the strange idiosyncrasies of her country until eventually he fell asleep.

Пиетро x Дарси

Wanda had arrived a few minutes after Pietro had succumbed to his sleep. Darcy kept her promise and stayed in the room with him regardless if a nurse came in and offered to keep him company.

“He must have liked you, you know.” Wanda said beside her where she rested on the bed close to her twin. Pietro was snoring softly, and the heart monitor had been reattached to keep an eye on him through his sleep, though Wanda insisted he didn’t need it. “My brother. He is always the quiet one. Unless he likes you or has something important to say, he nearly never speaks.”

“Well I couldn’t shut him up fast enough tonight. He’s funny.” She grinned, reclining her head back. She was refreshed, she hadn’t made a new friend in ages and the social butterfly in Darcy preened at hitting it off with Pietro tonight. Wanda was just as easy to talk to as her brother, if not for the scary makeup and intimidating staring, she was someone Darcy could see becoming really tight buds with.

“Did he tell you of his powers?” she asked softly, caressing her brother’s wrist absentmindedly as she watched him sleep. The light was dimmed for his comfort but the door was left ajar and the hallway kept the room softly illuminated.

“No. But it’s okay, you don’t have to tell me. I won’t pry.”

“I know.” Wanda smiled, turning her focus back to Darcy. “Which is exactly why I want to tell you. How we came to have powers, is up to him to share the story. But I’d like to tell you a little about my brother…” she readjusted the pillows behind his head and combed his hair away from his eyes. His soft snoring grew louder as he slept deeply.

Wanda smiled tenderly, seemingly to forget Darcy’s presence in the room, or simply not caring she’d lay witness for Wanda’s deep affection for her only family. “Pietro can run. Extremely fast. As fast as a speeding bullet, possibly faster though that’s yet to be proving seeing as how it’s what killed him in the first place. One moment, he is in one spot, blink, and he is across the room holding a Starbucks in his hand. It is truly incredible.”

“Sounds handy.” She snorted, pondering the possibilities of having a friend that can do her chores in the blink of an eye.

“He has fast healing too. One of the factors that ensured his survival against Doctor Cho’s work and my-” she cleared her throat. Looking deeply into Darcy’s eyes again in that weird shifty way she does that makes Darcy want to awkwardly chuckle. “I can trust you. I see it. Your future. You will hold a very important place in my brother’s life. You will be the benefactor to his recovery. Your positivity will help him heal.”

Darcy held up a hand, her heart lurching. “You can see the future? Wait! Will I walk again!? Do you see me walking?”

Wanda smiled, seemingly already expecting the questions because she didn’t have to even think about her response. “You can. But I will not say more.”

She _can_? Or she _will_? Because both meanings were entirely different to Darcy. Tell her she _can_ walk was almost a sure thing. Telling her she _will_ was just another empty platitude from an ignorantly hopeful person. Her head hurt trying to overanalyze Wanda’s phrasing.

Also, Darcy? A positive influence? She’s gotta be outta her damn mind.

“I played a part in my brother’s recovery. It took me longer than I expected, I’m still new with my powers and I didn’t know how or even if I could do it. But I practiced on a lot of injured soldiers from the facility. It is why there have not been many patients in and out as you might think. Especially for a hospital attached to a facility that houses men and women whom get injured in battle and training every day.”

“So you can heal people. Shit…” Could she heal Darcy? Would it be bad taste to ask her if she could fix her up like she did her brother so she could be on her merry way? Could she-

“I cannot heal you.” Wanda said, as if reading her mind.

She startled and her heart broke as she received an answer she hadn’t braced herself for. A small bubble of anger rooted in her throat. If she could bring a dead guy back to life, why couldn’t she heal her stupid legs? It wasn’t fair.

“I am sorry.” Wanda seemed sincerely apologetic, and Darcy nodded absently, accepting but dispirited over the situation entirely.

“What else can you do?” She asked cheerlessly, trying to fill the uncomfortable silence that had settled.

“Anything I want.”

Suddenly, Darcy’s loose hair lifted off her shoulders until the thick strands were grouped into three separate locks. “Oh shit!” The long locks slowly wound together into a loose braid. Her hair on her arms rose on end at the strange sensation of someone touching her hair without anyone actually doing it.

At the same time the bathroom door opened and closed, all the lights switched turned on and off simultaneously, and the curtains swished open. Darcy turned around at the incessant tapping on the large window panes, a few leaves fluttered by and latched onto the glass.

Wanda smiled, her fingers moving expertly in midair as fallen leaves spiraled in midair to spell out “HELLO” on the other side of the glass.

“You’re doing that?” Darcy asked in awe.

“With a lot of practice I have been able to perfect my many skills.”

She leaned back against her chair, impressed. “And you singlehandedly brought your brother back to life didn’t you? That’s really incredible _._ ”

She smiled and looked down at her lap bashfully, “you cannot tell anyone, Darcy. It’s under strict regulation that this must not become public knowledge. If it did-”

“Then everyone would be lining up with dead relatives for you to save. Yeah, I get it.” Darcy smiled, feeling ashamed over her inability to cure Darcy. “Your secret is safe with me.”

Пиетро x Дарси

In the days following her initial meeting of Pietro, she hadn’t been allowed to visit him. Apparently the twins were big deals to have had Clint Barton, Natasha Romanoff, _and_ Tony Stark visit him in the days following his awakening. She needed special type of clearance just to be in the same room with any of the Avengers- apparently, handicapped and no possible prospects of ever walking again were still not enough to deter the security from letting her meet the dynamic group of heroes taking up most of her new friend’s time.

Pietro was interesting. He reminded her of herself that night. The way his eyes would sort of focus harshly on his legs, the hard frown he’d get on his face when he couldn’t move around the bed fast enough liking and needed to brace himself on the bed just to get up. She knew the feeling.

For someone that had literally been living life on the fast lane, it must have been a bitter sweet slap to the face to have to walk like a normal person now.

Пиетро x Дарси

She knocked on the door to his room a few days later. Unsure if she was welcome or if he’d even remember her. She remembers what it was like for her the weeks following waking up from her surgeries, she was in and out constantly and every conversation was a blur.

Pietro had seemed more conscience the other night than she had been though.

Wanda was nowhere to be found, and Pietro had a tray of breakfast served before him.

“Darcy!” he said, even more chipper after a few day’s rest. The skin under his eyes weren’t as dark, and his toning had evened out- he was more tanned now as the sun beamed on him. His hair was a disaster, though that seemed to never change unless his sister took it into her control. “I apologize for falling asleep during our _fascinating_ discussion the other night. Truly good sleeping material. I slept like a child.”

She sensed he was being a sarcastic little shit, but she’ll let it slide as she was about to get her revenge as soon as he tried the nasty gray porridge in the untouched bowl in front of him.

She rolled toward him innocently, peeking into the Hospital food she thankfully didn’t have to eat anymore. Sometimes it was good, but after getting reintroduced to the bliss that was Chipotle, she’ll never go back.

“Don’t worry about it, Quicksilver.” Darcy quipped. Pietro froze as he was about to take a bite of his porridge, the nickname giving him pause as he stared at her in suspicion.

“How do you know that name.” He demanded, putting the spoon down, squaring his shoulders to face off with her.

She smiled serenely. “Your sister said you used to call yourself that in the mirror when no one was watching.” She smirked, “don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone.”

Pietro stared her down insolently, and she watched him right back. A few moments later he broke into a grin, throwing his head back in laughter. “My sister told you that, did she?” He smirked, stuffing a full spoon of porridge into his mouth and immediately spitting it back up in disgust. “Argh! What is this?!”

He’d likely been reduced to liquid foods the days following waking up. His first solid meal was a bowl of mixed vitamins and protein powders, blended together with rolled oats and whole grains, all poured over boiled soy milk to make it smooth like chowder. It was as disgusting as it sounded and unfortunately the only thing he’d likely be able to stomach. She grinned deviously.

“What?” she asked innocently. “Is it not fascinating enough for you?”

Пиетро x Дарси

In the days following, their friendship and conversation flowed just as easily as her first meeting with him.

He was a natural story teller, and he spent hours regaling her with tales of the fight at Sokovia, Ultron, his death, and the entire reason he and his sister became Supers to begin with.

It was tragic and sad, and she cried a little at the mention of him risking his life for a man he barely knew and a child that was as good as dead. His troubles hitting her a little close to home.

His story made her realize a few things she’d been keeping closed up in the back of her mind. Like Emily, the girl she rescued and all her kind letters going unanswered.

“But as soon as I am able to get out of bed, I want to go right back. What good is being extremely fast if I cannot run through the danger?”

She smiled absently, wishing she could have the same hope but knowing it was an impossibility.

Пиетро x Дарси

A week into their fast friendship marked the day the doctors realized he could not run, especially not as fast as he could before he’d died.

After that he stared at his legs a little too intently, stared at the other side of the room a little hard, as if trying to will himself to appear there in a split second like he might have been able to before his death.

It hadn’t taken her long to realize she recognized his resentful expression. It’s what she looked like when she tried to make her legs to move, or a toe to twitch, anything.

It was depressing, and she hated that when his mask slipped a look of self-loathing lay beneath. He hid it for her benefit, though she didn’t care.

He could walk and she couldn’t, and though she’d never be able to understand his frustration with his speed, or lack thereof, it didn’t make his anger and sadness any less valid.

She tried to hold his hand and tell him to be strong, the same way Jane used to.

That was the first time he closed the door to his room in her face.

Пиетро x Дарси

She could hear him through the confines of her room. With nothing but a wall separating their beds, it was hard to fall asleep to the sound of the Maximoff boy roar his anguish into the night.

Пиетро x Дарси

The next morning there was a pretty pink flower on the ground by her door, most likely picked from the indoor garden the patients visited. A note in illegible, scrawled handwriting was beneath it. **_“I am an ass”_** was all it said in hastily scribbled black ink.

Wanda’s words resounded in her ears and cemented themselves into her heart.

 _You will be the benefactor to his recovery. Your positivity will help him heal_.

She looked up from the note to find Pietro watching her from the frame of his door, an uncertain look on his face as he waited for her reaction to his shitty excuse of an apology.

She smiled, and his returning grin was so beautiful it almost took her breath away.

Пиетро x Дарси

“I wanted to help people.” He said quietly as he sat in her room after explaining the loophole. At the price for his life, he’d lost what gave him the drive to live. Without the scepter, who knows if his powers could come back. His sister was powerful, but even she didn’t think she had the capabilities to give him back what he’d lost.

He kept his disappointment of his situation under control when they spoke about it. And Darcy appreciated the grace to not actively complain about being unable to _run_ around a woman that had no ability to even _walk_.

“You can.” She assured, patting his hand. Willing him to believe her. “You will. You’re strong.”

He smiled, and for a second she believed her own words herself.

Пиетро x Дарси

He had been doing therapy in an outside track field. A coach used a timer to mark his best records. So far he could run a mile in under twenty minutes, which was good for an average person who exercises every so often.

Not so good for an enhanced guy that could usually run six laps in a blink of an eye.

Today she showed up to his training unannounced. She didn’t need nurses or Jesse to trail her around anymore so she’d taken advantage and went to the track area to watch his progress with her own eyes.  

He moved with an agility and grace of someone that had been running his entire life, and the green monster of jealousy didn’t rear its ugly head for once. She was in awe at the power of his legs, the way his calves flex with each controlled step, the determined set of his jaw, the way his hair flowed in the wind with his speed.

He seemed to be trying to give it all he got. The only sign of his fatigue was toward the end of his lap as he slowed down. His steps grew less graceful, his arms flailed to the sides as he tried to practically force himself with toward his finale. He threw his head back and breathed through his mouth as he ran, and she could see his chest heaving from where she hid.

Pietro stopped when the physical trainer mercifully blew his whistle. He jogged over to him, nearly buckling onto the ground as his knees almost gave out. His trainer caught him easily, helping him steady himself as he got his breathing under control.

“Fifteen minutes forty-six seconds. You did good today.” The man clapped Pietro on the shoulder.

Pietro righted, wiping his sweaty brow angrily. “Not nearly as good. I need to work harder. I should be faster.”

“You’ve only been at this for a few days, dude.” Darcy reminded, revealing herself from around the corner of the facility.

Pietro and his trainer turned in surprise. He grinned sunnily, and the slight sheen on his face was sexier than she really liked to admit. The trainer looked at her annoyed.

“Hi.” She waved innocently.

“You’re not authorized to be here.” He barked.

“No.” Pietro defended, “let her stay. She is good. It does well to have motivators, no?”

Darcy chuckled as he sauntered over to her. His light cleated sneakers crunched the grass beneath his feet as he made his way over to the sidewalk that had been preventing her from coming any closer to the track.

“Fifteen minutes.” He muttered, expressing a little bit of vulnerability to his new friend and neighbor. “That’s good for a few days running, no?” he ducked his head lower to hers, keeping their conversation private from his hovering trainer.

“I think you’re doing great. Don’t exert yourself too much. You don’t wanna hurt yourself before you can really show ‘em what you’ve got.”

“Yeah?” Pietro laughed, ruffled her hair playfully with his sweaty hand and made his way back to the track where the trainer was holding the timer up as a signal.

Pietro stepped to the mark, and when the whistle blew, he took off. His jaw twitching with newfound determination.

Пиетро x Дарси

Today was a peaceful day. There were no Avengers locking up the hospital wing for their visit, there were no nurses prodding at her legs, or doctor trying to create a response that wouldn’t happen. He didn’t have training, and she didn’t have therapy.

Pietro had been given an emergency contact list as well as a list of people that can go in to visit without needing to check-in. And even though it was unnecessary, because she lived literally a door away, he’d written her name down right below his own sister’s.

It was sweet, but for a guy she’d only known about a month, kinda unwarranted.

“My sister says I can trust you. I take that into high consideration.” He’d said as she watched him jot her name down on the short list right above Clint Barton himself.

They lounged in her room today. He’d been cleared to walk at his own leisure, and though he wasn’t bad enough to warrant a walker or a wheelchair, he stumbled every so often, claiming his muscles were sore and needing a few extra hours to recuperate. It caused him to lean a little more heavily on the handlebars of her wheelchair for balance.

His sister wasn’t present, begging off for training for some top-secret group she was part of on the other side of the facility.

Pietro was flipping through the few channels at a quick speed, too fast to even catch a second of any one station.

“Your television is shit.” He grumbled sitting up on her wheelchair and balancing himself on the hind legs precariously.

Though she hated being in her room, she much preferred it to the stark, bleak walls of his. The colorful pictures, posters taped to the walls, and bouquets of flowers Jane arranges made it feel more like a home than she really wanted.

“You’re shit.”

“Your face is shit.”

Darcy gasped, sticking her tongue out at him in indignation. “Liar.”

He chuckled, throwing her a cheeky look, and turned back to looping through the channels again.

“It’s Tuesday, we can go do some arts and-” he grunted. “Listen to music?”

“We did that yesterday.”

“Wanna go for a walk?”

He sat up straighter, dropping his feet from where they were perched on her bed. His eyes lit up like a kid’s and he shot off her chair, practically ringing her beeper himself to call upon Jesse to help her into her wheelchair.

Пиетро x Дарси

She’d only ever come out to the gardens with Erik. Most days he would push her chair and they’d just take in the sun in silence. It was calm and tranquil, and there was a pretty path by the lake her wheelchair was safe to loop around. There were rolling hills just beyond the tree line, where beautiful pink apple blossoms thrived at the onset of the season.

Pietro wasn’t calm. He was a nervous ball of energy and he took in every tree and every bird with a detached interest of a man seeing things through fogged lenses.

“It is strange.” He supplied after a miraculous bout of silence from both their ends. “I can still see everything move slowly, as if my body was moving at warp speed.” He pointed at a butterfly floating by a bush beside them. His eyes hardened as he stared raptly at the bug. “When I focus, that butterfly is floating in midair. Without having flapped the wings once. But when I look again?” he blinked, breaking himself away from the trance, “it is fluttering like normal.” Pietro looked away from the butterfly as if agonized. “If I had not died… I’d be over that hill in less than a blink of an eye. Picking a flower from the highest branch, and presenting it to you before you could realize I was even gone.”

She frowned, unused to his self-depreciating, bleak tone. It explained why he sometimes stared at something a little too intensely. “You shouldn’t think like that,” she said simply, and wheeled ahead of him to keep herself from becoming sour over his negative thinking. “You’re lucky to be alive. Running or no running.”

Pietro didn’t answer, and his wry smile was left unseen.

 


	3. Take Care of Yourself

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anyone wondering, the chapter titles refer to "Five Tips to Begin Healing From Your Depression." They are not foolproof, depression is a serious thing that requires medical attention and loving friends and family to help you through it.
> 
> Pietro is helping Darcy through hers without even knowing it.

> * * *
> 
>  
> 
> "He was goofy, stubborn, flirt. He was always sarcastic and treated everything like a joke. The world was his playground… but his smile was sunshine and I’m cold without it.” -Darcy Lewis
> 
> * * *
> 
>  

Пиетро x Дарси

It was the night before her first one-on-one appointment with Dr. Cho. They will be discussing plans for a new transplant surgery for the nerves in her legs. If the operation was successful, it might put her on the path to walking again- as well as being one of the first people to receive such a new and recently unknown operation.

Jesse had helped her onto her mattress after her bath, and Darcy had blushed furiously in embarrassment as Pietro walked in unannounced as he had been lifting her up from her chair. He had looked on curiously from the entrance to her room, not saying a word as her legs were tucked into the bed for her.

“Hey, Pietro.” She waved casually, choosing not to let this be weird.

He seemed to shake himself off, looking at her strangely, as if he’d never noticed just how hindering being unable to use your legs really was.

“Hello, sexy pants.” He grinned, mock saluting her from where he leaned against the wall.

Jesse’s head snapped towards him in horror. “What’d you call her?”

Darcy hid her smirk, amused by the look of horror on Jesse’s handsome face.

Pietro’s expression was contorted in mock confusion. Darcy held her belly to keep from laughing as a silent understanding passed between them. “Is that not a term of endearment here in America? Darcy said all the men say it.” Jesse turned to glare at Darcy where she hid behind her giant grin. She erupted into laughter at the look of annoyance on Jesse’s face. He crossed his arms and glared at her disappointedly.

“Corrupting your minion already, Lewis?” he scowled, placing a jug of water and her Emergency remote within easy reach. Before Jesse could turn around and reach for her Starkpad, Pietro was already half on the bed, browsing through her Netflix queue as he made himself comfortable.

“Oh, you have no idea.” she grinned as Pietro handed her a bowl of cafeteria pudding with the snap of her fingers.

Пиетро x Дарси

Jesse had gone hours ago, leaving Pietro and Darcy to their own devices. The only two people of similar ages on their floor, they had taken to staying up late with one another, gossiping over anything juicy they’d come upon during their daily activities.

Pietro was at the end of her bed, her bare foot propped on his knee as he balanced a bottle of red nail polish on a discarded food tray on his lap. He was staring at her toes intently, taking to his task as if his life depended on it.

She couldn’t feel his hands on her feet, or the wet paint on her toes. He was getting it everywhere he wasn’t supposed to. In another life she’d be wiggling everywhere, ticklish on her most sensitive spot where his fingers touched.

It wasn’t the first time she’d coerced him into painting her toes, nor would it be the last if she had it her way. Her cuticles were a messy splatter of crimson, yet it was miles better than when Jane does it. All it had taken was a bit of bribing him with her dessert and he was wrapped around her finger- but joke was on him, she didn’t even like the lime green Jell-O he stole for her. She snickered inwardly at the trap she’d set him in. Her toenail painting slave.

His tongue was peeking out of his mouth, and she bit her lip over how cute it was. Immediately chasing the thought away when that cute concentration on his task was replaced with a cocky, knowing smirk.

“The last woman that stared at me like that was awake. All night. Screaming my name.”

She rolled her eyes and-

“And no,” he glared at her before she could retort, “my sister was _not_ that girl.”

She held her hands up in surrender. People whispered, and incest was a real concern in this world. She wouldn’t be surprised if-

“We are not. She is my sister. Špinavý žena.”

“You sure you’re not a mind reader?”

He rolled his eyes and she snickered. He was an idiot, but he was her friend. Smug arrogance and all. She snorted, which garnered her a poke into the side of her knee. “So, did you get any dirt? What’s happening in the rest of the facility?”

He sighed, rolling his neck around his slumped shoulders. “I do not know. My sister dallies with the association of a few people. Sam Wilson. He calls himself, ehh, Falcon. As well as the friend of Stark’s. But what they are doing, what they are training for, I do not know.” His twisted frown suddenly turned haughty, “I want to join that group of toys.”

“You wanna fight again?” She asked, already knowing the answer.

She noticed it in the way his hands sometimes drummed too fast to a speed his legs couldn’t follow, the way he twitched like an ex-junkie. He was itching for something, and as a guy that channeled all his energy in running, it was wasted on painting her toes.

He stayed quiet as his shoulders hunched over her feet.

“How’s your sister doing?” She knew he’d been worried lately. She’d been gone more often these days and hadn’t been able to visit, claiming she was figuring out the extent of her powers- which were seemingly limitless once Pietro had given her the unedited version. “Has she come by lately?” The question was moot. She and Pietro spent nearly every free minute together. If his twin had been around she would have known about it.

“I have not seen her in several days. She says she is busy. Trying to ‘figure out how to fix something,’ she had said.” He shifted, refocusing his attention on her feet and the disaster he’d created there. “Don’t know what she is trying to fix. I am already alive.” He grumbled, then looked up at her quickly, as if remembering something. “Are you nervous? About your appointment tomorrow?”

He’d asked her the same thing nearly every time before a big appointment. Always worried about any visits she made with the doctors pertaining her ability to walk again. He’d grown to taking her himself to her physical therapy visits, dropping her off at different floors where psychologists and physicians alike would await with news to any of Cho’s plans for her.

Darcy was beginning to feel more like a pet than a patient at this point. She’d long overstayed her visit here in this hospital wing. The only reason she remained in her room was because her apartment was an hour commute and she didn’t have the funds for a cab or a personal driver to make it happen.

She knew, honestly, that she was only there because she had friends in very high places. No ordinary Level 1 Agent, or any agent for that matter, would get the treatment or rehabilitation she’d received here.

But there was always something or someone to keep her occupied with a new medicine they wanted to try, or new therapy they claimed would work. She was tired of being fed hope only to have it quashed immediately.

Pietro was the only one that understood was she was going through, believe it or not. He might not be paralyzed- he could still walk- but he was debilitated in some way, stripped of something that gave his life purpose.

She was like Doctor Cho’s personal experiment. Everything but her legs were rebuilt in some way by the doctor she hadn’t even had the chance to meet face-to-face yet.

Her organs were completely rebuilt, using whatever had been left of the pancake that taxi had made of her. Genetically, it was all the same, but realistically, her skin had never looked so smooth to her, her previously stretch-marked body was so unfamiliar.

“I’ll be fine.” She sighed, and she knew he could sense the lie. The thing about Pietro though, was that he knew when to let her pretend. He reached forward, squeezed her hand, and smiled encouragingly.

That was their friendship. A give and take of encouragement and positivity.

For now though, she was happy to let him be the one holding her together.

Пиетро x Дарси

Every morning he quietly presents her a hand-picked flower from the indoor garden, and every morning she smiles just a little wider.

She has a full bouquet in her room every week. A new color to add to the growing collection on her window sills but she’s beginning to run out of space in her room. They never brown and they never wilt, and she has a feeling he’s swindling his sister into do some magic on the flowers.

None of them have died. She has seventy-four and counting since that day he slammed the door in her face and apologized with a pink lily.

It’s her favorite one thus far, and has a special place in a make-shift Mason jar vase on her nightstand.

Whenever she’s feeling a little dejected, or hopeless, or nervous, she picks up the flower and smiles.

Пиетро x Дарси

In this wing of the hospital, the levels were reversed. Level two was the basement, level three was below that, and so on. It was chilly, and she should have rethought the t-shirt she wore.

She shook slightly as Pietro wheeled her to the end of the hall. A shiny label marked the correct door.

**Helen Cho, M.D., PhD.**

**Room 403**

 “Call me as soon as it is over.” He encouraged as he dropped a quick kiss to the crown of her head. She warmed, touched by his unnecessary affection.

“Yeah, yeah.” She waved halfheartedly, rubbing to tops of her arms for warmth. “I’ll be fine.” She turned to look up at him and the bright lights created a glare. His head was surrounded with a halo of light. As she looked up to his broad chest and higher to his strong jaw and long hair, he looked like an angel.

But he was frowning. “Are you cold?” he glared. “Why do you forget jacket when you know it will be cold?” he rolled his eyes, and before she could sputter that he was _not her goddamn mother,_ he was taking his cargo jacket off and tucking it around her frame.

“What are you doing? I’m fine.” She protested with a huff. His biceps curled around her as he needlessly helped her into the huge sweater. Immediately she was encased in warmth, and the spicy mix of aftershave and cologne wrapped around her and soothed the flutter of nerves she’d been trying to ignore in anticipation for her appointment.

“I cannot have my best friend dying of a cold.”

“I’m your _only_ friend.” She muttered.

“And you are weak. Like a kitten. You will catch a cold and then I will have no friends. Do you want that?”

She hid her grin behind the upturned collar of his jacket and turned to stare up at him under her lashes. Pietro stood back up with a fond smile, his expression no longer joking, only content.

Their eyes connected and suddenly the spicy aftershave surrounding her was doing a little more than calming the flutters in her belly.

In a moment completely out of character for him, Pietro blushes slightly at her intent stare from under her lashes.

She chuckled triumphantly and he shifts nervously. Never one to stay in an intense mood, he grins, pats her hair with his giant hand, and musses her hair affectionately.

“Hey!” she protests, reaching to fix the bangs he’d knotted.

“Good luck, krásný!”

Пиетро x Дарси

“Hello, Agent Lewis.” Doctor Cho greeted from her seat at her desk. She was surrounded by walls of blinking and beeping tech. This was nothing like what Darcy had imagined.

Darcy imagined a bit of a mad scientists’ lair. Kinda like Jane Foster meets Meredith Grey meets Frankenstein.

Her whole office was a glass chamber of sleek and modern furnishings. Her laptop was integrated into the metal desk, a yellow umbrella reclined against her white swivel chair and there was a half-dead ficus behind the door she’d entered.

A wall of diplomas, Harvard, Yale, and another Ivy League from the UK were proudly displayed behind the small Asian woman watching her with kind eyes.

“Thank you for meeting with me today.” She was a little slip of a woman. Tiny in her high collared suit. Her hair, like the last time Darcy had seen her, was swept to the side and tied back at the nape of her neck. Long, straight black hair was tossed over her shoulder and out of the way. She looked up as Darcy was escorted into the room, her sensor pen never stopping its meticulous jotting on the sensor pad at her arm.

“Thanks for having me.” She smiled. She was a bit nervous, and if anyone noticed her hands twist nervously inside of the long sleeves of Pietro’s jacket, then no one would blame her.

“I know our meeting is long overdue, you’ve been on standby for much too long-”

“-a whole year-” Darcy sighed under her breath.

“-and I know it can get frustrating. Everyone keeps telling you the end of this path is near and you will get better… and no results have shown.” Dr. Cho began to ask if she’d been taken off the medication Darcy had been put on, ticked off a few lists of doses her physicians tried to progress stimulation in her nerves.

“Doctor,” Darcy said after a while, the back and forth of varying medication she was no longer taking was giving her a headache. All those long medical terms she’d memorized were making her brain hurt. “What’s the surgery? You said there was something that’s been progressively new? Something that’s shown results?”

Dr. Cho smiled knowingly. “Call me, Helen. And yes.” She flipped the screen of her laptop with the tap of a button, and a video began to play. Two men in lab coats were speaking into the camera, their accents may have been Korean, as they explained something Darcy didn’t understand. “These are Doctor’s Pak and Shin. About ten years ago they came up with world renowned medical equipment to assist neurologists with very tricky procedures.” The video cut the doctors to a clip of a tall machine, long wires protruded from the bottom and hooked up to a monitor and EKG device. The tip of the machine looked like a very long, very thick, needle.

“With my help, their designs have proven successful on three of five patients with cases such as yours.”

“Patients that were hit by a car and put back together like humpty dumpty in your lab?” she smiled, her sad eyes softening the blow of her sarcastic quip. She didn’t get a chance to apologize for her rudeness before Doctor Cho grinned, understanding Darcy’s frustration with her situation, and classy enough to let it go.

“Something like that. Observe.” She nodded to the screen again. There was a handsome man in a wheelchair being lifted onto the bed, the same way Jesse did for her every morning and every night. The clip cut to him leaving an operating room, his legs bandaged. Then the video cut to the same man, standing up from his bed. Judging by the man’s facial hair, it seemed to have been a few months after the initial surgery.

“See how he stands?” she pointed as the man in the video grins, tears streaking down his face as two nurses help him take his first step. “He had been a soldier and hurt his spine in an accident on duty. He hadn’t been able to walk in six years. He has two children and a loving wife, all of whom are very grateful he can walk again.”

“How do you know this?” Darcy asks cautiously as hope blooms in her chest with newfound speed. The people in the video cheers as he walks slowly and steadily to two children across the room, a boy and a girl.

Helen smiles and watches the video fondly. Tracing the crying children’s faces with her fingertip. “That man is Jon Cho. My husband.”

Darcy gasps, her head snaps to Helen’s as the video reveals a crying woman in a familiar lab coat run up to the man and children. The strong man envelops Helen in a hug and he visibly crumples to the ground, the small woman holding him steady in her arms.

“I believe in this operation because it is very personal to me.” Helen sighs in reminiscence, shutting the video off and closing her laptop.

Darcy stayed silent for a long time. Her old doubt coming back to the forefront. “Why are you giving me this? Is this charity? I know I’m like Shield sisters with Thor and everything, but this has gotta be waaaay above what my insurance covers.”

The room is quiet for a second as Helen watches Darcy. She’s fidgeting in the large sweater, her legs are too still in contrast to the way her knuckles tap at the arm rests of her chair, or her nose twitches under Helen’s heavy stare. Somewhere in the room a clock is ticking.

Helen clasped her hands on the desk and taps her pinky rhythmically on the glass top. “You have Agent Coulson at your beck and call. A renowned astrophysicist with a Nobel peace prize to her name is your best friend. A Norse god and King of an alien planet calls himself your brother. Captain America himself thinks of you fondly. And to top it off, the Maximoff Twins trust you enough with their secrets.”

Darcy wanted to ask how she knew that. Helen never ventured the halls of the hospital unless it was dire. Word must have spread further than she’d thought of hers and Pietro’s friendship.

“So, not a charity? Then what? I’m popular and you’re looking for a spot in the table?” she regretted the rude comment as soon as she’d said it. Her mouth puckers in sourness as the comment floated between them for a beat. “Sorry, I- sorry. That was fucked up. It came out badly, I didn’t mean-”

Helen didn’t seem to be too shocked at her comment. “You remind me a lot of my friend. Have you met Tony Stark?” when Darcy shook her head, still too embarrassed by her attitude to speak verbally, Helen continues on. “The most powerful people to walk this facility think only positive things of you. That is rare and that is treasured. You risked your life- nearly lost it- trying to save a little girl you haven’t even tried to meet face to face yet. You don’t want glory, you don’t want to keep your place in the popular table, as you call it.” Helen slid her a file and Darcy reaches forward to look it over. “They are super soldiers and geniuses and thousand year old beings and they take you into open arms because you have something... Moxie, charisma, whatever you want to name it, you have it and the people you surround yourself with gravitate to it like planets to the sun. You are a good person, Darcy Lewis.”

“It’s a million dollar surgery.” Darcy said, looking up from the contract she’s meant to sign. Helen nods, a twinkle in her eye. “And you’re giving it to me because I’m _a_ _good_ _person_?”

Hellloooooo, anyone remember Dr. Erskin’s super-serum motto? Steve told her that one twenty times. This chit-chat is oddly reminiscent of it.

Helen looks down at her hands and smiles, watching Darcy as she reads the forms quickly. “Pietro Maximoff doesn’t blush for just anyone, Agent. Think that over and sign the medical forms when you’re ready to get started.”

Пиетро x Дарси

“Look what I got!” Darcy sing-songed as she held up a bag of unauthorized microwaveable popcorn. It was Movie Theater styled, extra buttery and all types of bad for you- exactly what’s not under the Doctor’s orders. She and Pietro had agreed to meet in the common room that night and utilize the giant screen TV and limitless channels.

“Where did you get that!” he grins, sauntering over to her chair. He leans down and gives her a quick kiss on the cheek in greeting. He fell onto the couch with a heavy sigh.

“Jane.” She smirked. Thankful for her constant need to smuggle unauthorized goods into her room and totally proud over the fact that none of the staff have caught her yet.

“She’s good friend, no?” he asked, getting up to grab two fistfuls of popcorn. She watches him with an open mouth as he stuffs his face with it, uncaring that he looks like a pig in front of her. Small flecks of buttery popcorn stick to his lips, and it would have looked disgusting if the way his puffed cheeks resembled a chipmunk’s wasn’t so adorable.

“She’s like my sister.” She sighs happily, throwing caution to the wind and stuffing her mouth with a fist full of popcorn as well. “O-ly f’mily I haf left.”

“That is not true!” he grunted. He snatched the bottle resting in her lap and takes a drink of her water. “You have me! And my sister. I might consider lending her from time to time.” He thinking about it for a moment over another handful of popcorn. “Pre’erably when sh’ iff on ‘er period, no?” He glances at her from the corner of his eye as he swallows his food. She cackles, his infectious mood rubbing off on her.

“How was training?” she asks, seeing as how that must have been the reason for his joviality. She fiddles with the Netflix queue, popping up anything they haven’t seen yet. Pietro was a huge movie buff, and could quote literally anything with gusto if he was in a weird enough mood. Most of the time now they just let the movie play, mute the TV and pretend to make their own script. He was hilarious, and the funny grunts he’d made during a particularly bad zombie movie had her in stitches for hours.

He sighs, leaning back against the couch and threw his arm over his face dramatically. His hair was wet. Long curls stuck to his forehead. He smelled like spicy aftershave and men’s soap. He was wearing one of the pajama’s she’d asked Jane to buy for him. Wanda almost never left the facility, and while the staff and hospital offered clothing, there was nothing like having your own set of soft sleeping shirts.

“Long. Tiring. Boring.” He sat up quickly, a wide grin on his face. “I’ve beat my record. Nine minutes now. Three miles.”

She grins ecstatically, reaching over to slap him on the bicep. He pouted, pretending it hurt. Nine minutes was impressive! But making that time on three miles was amazing! He bumped her fist with a contagious grin. “Dude!” she squealed. “That’s amazing! I’m so proud of you!” she enthused, meaning every word of it.

He was getting better and better every passing week. Every second of his recuperation was multiplied tenfold when it came to him and his enhanced metabolism. What’s taken her one year, he’d done in three months.

She was so proud over his achievement that she completely forgot to tell him about her meeting with Doctor Cho.

Пиетро x Дарси

Sometimes, Pietro would come into her room, still half asleep, and pluck her out of her bed.

They didn’t happen often, but when they did, they reasons were consistent enough that she understood it to mean something unpleasant had happened the night before.

His nightmares wake her up most nights. When they do, she taps on the wall until he wakes up and taps back.

…but when his sleep is deep enough to last until the mornings, when he can’t bring himself to wake up from the night terrors, he’s never in the best of moods.

She knows what it’s like to be trapped in a nightmare, unable to scream for help or wake up.

Those mornings, she lets him do what he wants. She lets him pluck her out of bed, still half asleep. She lets him tuck her in next to him and hide his head into her neck like a scared ostrich.

Sometimes she feels they’re a little too close than how normal friends should be.

Normal friends don’t wrap their arms around one another and don’t let go. Normal friends aren’t charmed by each other’s disgusting morning breath. Normal friends don’t see each other in nothing but their underwear. Normal friends don’t pet each other’s hair until the other falls asleep.

But these mornings… these mornings filled with painful memories and nightmares… bullet holes and car horns… these mornings don’t count.

These mornings are quiet and nostalgic, filled with understanding, and she doesn’t have it in her to feel embarrassed when she burrows into him just a little deeper too.

Пиетро x Дарси

It was one in the afternoon and both of them were still laying on his bed. Neither of them were even talking, choosing to listen through their own respective headphones in peace.

They’ve come to a point in their friendship where speaking wasn’t even a necessity. They could just chill out, bum together without even needing to say a peep.

She was propped up against his pillow now- hours later after he’d stolen her from her room- and cuddled with a teddy bear he’d stolen from her.

Coldplay was softly playing in her earbuds, and through the lilt of Chris Martin’s seductive voice, she could hear heavy guitar riffs come out of Pietro’s headphones.

His eyes were closed and he was playing air guitar like no one’s business, lip synching to whatever he was listening to. His elbow kept bumping against her tit annoyingly every few seconds as he enthusiastically pretended to strum a guitar.

“…and I go craaaazy cause hereisn’twhereIwannabe!” she heard him mumble lowly, singing a little louder as if he couldn’t help himself. She paused her music but left her headphone’s in and listened to him completely butcher the poor band’s song. His bare foot was tapping to the rhythm, bumping against her ankle and jostling her unmoving leg. If he was uncomfortable with the way he kept jerking into her, it wasn’t evident.

“Just wanna hear ya saaaay you got me baaaby. Dun dun dun da da dun.”

The bed shifted as he air drummed, feet digging into the bed and his hips lifted off the mattress as strummed an imaginary guitar.

For a second Darcy wondered what god she’d annoyed to be given such a loser for a friend.

 “Dun dun da dun! Ba baba da da!” He croaked beside her. She didn’t turn her music back on for the next three songs he continued to massacre. Instead she closed her eyes and tried not to let on to the fact that his elbow was still digging into her tit annoyingly.

Пиетро x Дарси

She’s on her way back to her room from her physical therapy when she catches sight of him at the nurse’s station. He’s leaning against the desk, his ankles crossed as he peers over the counter to the pretty blonde girl working the front desk.

She’s twirling her hair and laughing at something he’s saying. His hands flail as he reenacts something that makes the pretty girl throw her head back in giggles. Darcy smirks as she catches him trying to get his flirt on, and is about to leave him to it, when he catches sight of her across the hall.

The flirty grin he’d been giving the nurse widens into something charmed and sincere. Without asking, he plucks one of the artificially colored flowers out of the vase on the girl’s desk and bounds over to Darcy, holding the hot pink daisy and tapping it under her chin playfully.

“There you are, krásný!” he greets, handing her the flower with a beam. “I have been waiting forever! How was your session?” he takes the handles of her chair and guides her toward their rooms. As they pass the blonde nurse he’d been flirting with, she glares at Darcy and the flower he’d stolen from her desk.

She grips the flower a little tighter and tries to quash the unnecessary feeling of triumph down.

Пиетро x Дарси

Their relationship is a give and take of laughter and teasing and mocking and sarcasm. He’s a shit and she’s a bitter cripple but he treats her like a China doll he wants to keep on a high shelf.

She’s independent and doesn’t need him treating her like anything but his friend, but every time he helps her into her chair, or hands her things out of reach without consciously thinking about it, she’s a little more grateful to have been nosy enough to wander into his room and meet him.

Пиетро x Дарси

They laugh at everything. At each other, at other people, at stupid jokes she finds on Tumblr and funny Sokovian riddles he blurts out when he’s bored.

They laugh until she needs to pee and he has to carry her to the bathroom because she won’t be able to make it. He laughed for hours when she once actually _did_ accidentally pee herself a little. And she laughed when she caught him with his finger up his nose.

She giggles at his expressions. She cackles when he takes a bite of Wednesday’s mystery meat. She wheezes. A clutching your belly, no sound coming out, gasping for breath- type of laugh, when he invents stories and games for each other’s entertainment when neither of them can sleep.

Пиетро x Дарси

She falls in love with him in the middle of his rant on the political injustices of his dismantled country.

She falls in love with him when he cries over the lost city he used to call home. She falls in love when he tries to brush tears away when she’s not looking, as if she wasn’t attuned to his every breath, his every emotion.

She falls in love with him every times he calls her _beautiful_ in that curling, smoky accent. In that tantalizing, rare language she doesn’t understand. His slow lilt shared through secretive whispers in the night.

She falls when he takes his sweaty shirt off after training, totally comfortable in her presence in a way he only ever was with his sister and _only_ his sister.

When his mind races a mile a minute, jumping from one thought to the next before he could even take a breath and pause. She falls in love when he brushes away her worry that she’s too slow for him. She can only go so fast in her wheelchair, and he’s left to walk at a turtle’s pace in her presence.

She falls in love when he talks about his sister. His voice growing a little softer, a little more protective, when he speaks of their childhood and growing up alone together.

Every time he smiles. Every time he laughs. Every time he takes his giant hand and fucks up her hair before he exits a room. Every time he gives her a flower with that stupid, silly little grin on his face. Every time he runs up to her with his new records and new achievements in the track field. Every time he pushes Jesse out of the way so he could escort her himself. When he uses the back pedals to jump onto her chair and race them both down the hall, their laughter echoing in their wake.

Her heart speeds, races, sprints, when he grins. Her smile plasters, permeates her face when she catches his messy bedhead, or his sloppy eating habits and the way he can _literally never_ leave food on the plate without making a mess everywhere.

She loves when he drums his fingers on her arm, or shoulder, or leg, using her body as an extension of his own when he’s agitated or his ADHD kicks up. She loves his hyperactivity. She loves the way he can never stay still until she has to glare at him to stop moving.

She falls in love when he says stupid, or rude things like, “Shut up, woman. You are speaking of nonsenses.” Or “your pace does not bother me. You are not fast of body, but of mind you are my rival.”

Or when he mixes up his American phrases and says things like “taking a weather bill,” instead of ‘taking a rain check.’ When he learns a new English word and completely butchers it… and then blushes, thinking himself stupid, when in reality he’s one of the smartest, quickest men she knows.

She falls in love with that little tattoo on his left shoulder blade. The Sokovian word for “ _Justice_ ” in dark black cursive, swirling around the curves of his smooth skin.

She falls in love with every single imperfection, and she doesn’t even realize it until it’s too late.

Пиетро x Дарси

They’re in his room and he’s digging through his drawers searching frantically for the keycard his sister had given him. It allowed him access to every room he was authorized to enter and he’d lost it the second she gave it to him.

“I cannot find it!” he wails, throwing every t-shirt out of his drawer. She’s sitting across his room in her wheelchair as she watches him run from each corner of the room, destroying everything in his wake as he searches. His speed has begun to pick up lately and if she’s not paying close attention, she’d miss the way his body seems to blur around the edges with his increasing speed.

 He runs like the Tasmanian devil, throwing shit left and right as he searches through pockets of recently worn jeans he’d been too lazy to fold.

“I needed to be in the facility’s training room two minutes ago, do you understand?!” he yells, turning to face his only audience. He shakes his Nike trainers in his hands at her as if her presence personally offended him. “Where is it! Je to nesmysl!”

“Did you try retracing your steps?”

He turns to her with a glare, as if that was the most stupid thing she’s ever asked.

“The power of sightseeing belongs to my sister,” he sasses.

“Well then! Why don’t you go ask her where you left your pass, hmm?” she quipped.

He threw his shoes down with a huff and bound toward his closet again where a pile of clothes lay recently scattered along the floor.

Darcy turned in her chair, and there, resting on his nightstand beneath a giant pile of unopened files and newspaper clippings, (which he was supposed to go through to catch up on the year he’d been out) was a shiny square of plastic with his credentials and picture on it.

She reached forward and took the ID card, holding it up for him. She whistled for his attention and he poked his head out of his closet in annoyance.

“What, woman?”

“Looking for this?”

His expression broke out in gratitude and relief. He bounded over to her and snatched the key card in relief. “Ste krásna žena!” he cried out, and took her face between his hands and planted a kiss.

Right. On. Her. Mouth.

Before she could even realize what was going on, before she could properly inhale the mint from his toothpaste or feel the soft cushions of his lips pressed against hers, he pulls away with a triumphant gin splitting his face.

He reaches up and musses her hair, and was out of the door before she could even blink.

Пиетро x Дарси

They're sitting on a picnic blanket by the lake. Behind them, military officials are marching. In front of them a flock of geese swim, their wings flap against the water as it ripples. The sun is just beginning to break through the few clouds and Darcy’s glad she had the right mind to bring her sunglasses with her.

Pietro had been on his way back from the track field when he spotted her sitting peacefully on her own.

She’d waved him over with a welcoming smirk and he jogged her way, cutting through the single file line of military men and messing up their march. The loud, sharp cry of a whistle blowing at him didn’t stop his silly grin as he made his way over to her, unconcerned with the chaos he’d ensued behind him.

He toed off his running shoes and discarded them beside her, and she can smell the stinky soles from where she's laying.

After an hour of meaningless chit-chat, Pietro finally sighs, flipping onto his stomach to watch her. She had been close to falling into a cat-nap. After a quiet few minutes he sighs.

“What?” she asks, knowing he had a retort at the tip of his tongue. She opened her eyes and turned her head to face him. His head rested on his arms, one of his hands outstretched to trail along her bare arm and tap each freckle he can reach.

“This is boring,” he complains, writing his name along her skin with a jagged, bitten nail. She shifts her sunglasses higher up her nose and turned away, effectively ignoring him. “Let's go for a swim?”

She looks at him over her glasses and looks down at her legs pointedly. “I can't move my feet, Pietro.”

He rolls his eyes. “Like I cannot manage to hold you in water. Really, girl, you think that I am stupid?” she turned away from him, her answering smile just shy of mocking.

“Well…” she gasps when he pinches her, and her shriek cause a few birds up in the trees to fly away in surprise.

“You do not trust me?” he says after she stops laughing at him. She stares at him a little harder and he relents. “I am trustworthy.” He defends, understanding her without having to say a thing.

“ _Sure_ you are.”

He's quiet for all of two seconds when she's suddenly picked up and they're marching toward the lake. She squeals, catching the attention of a few of the agents running drills behind them.

“Let me down, you big idiot!" She smacks at his wet chest, his workout shirt covered in musky sweat. Her hand sticks to his pecks where his shirt clings. She squeals when he hikes her up higher in his arms, his left arm curling her legs tightly against his side. “Put me down!”

“‘Put me down?’ What does that mean? My English… it is not too good.” He grins, his eyes shining in mirth. He laughs openly when her arms tighten around his neck as he pretends to drop her into the murky water.

She knows he won’t do it. Pietro plays around a lot but he’s not an asshole. But a little part of her didn’t mind clinging to him just a little tighter. He looks down and smiles and it was like looking into the sun. Her response is to pinch his neck, and his smile turns feral.

He doesn't stop until he's ankle deep in the water and holding her with outstretched arms. “Take off your shoes,” he orders.

She gives him one last half-hearted glare, when finally she reaches forward in his arms and takes her sandals off, throwing them in the direction of the blanket one of her caretakers laid out for her. One lands on the grass, the other yards off into a bush. He mutters something about her needed to work on her aim, and she ignores him.

“Hold my neck.”

Suddenly he's shifting her carefully in his arms until she’s vertical, her body leaning completely against his. His arms wrap around her torso and her legs swing uselessly below her.

She must have been heavy- he was supporting all her weight without help of a chair or crutches- yet his face was free of any signs of strain.

“What are you doing?” she raises a brow, trying not to blush over the fact they were pressed up in a way that she’d definitely be thinking about late at night later.

“I am helping you stand.” He shifted his arms and her entire body jostled as he got more comfortable with his grip.

She tightened her hold around his neck a little tighter and tried not to think too hard over the fact they were so close. Their chests are pressed tightly to one another's in a way it’s never been before.

Pietro and Darcy were both very touchy people- once they got comfortable enough. They were playful, cuddly, and familiar together. It took them months to get to that level of comfort.

But this seemed intimate.

He was her rock, supporting her completely and without complaint.

This was personal.

Suddenly, he dips her a little more down his body, using his hips and thighs to support her naval and her feet touch the ground, the water swallows her bare feet and she could feel the sensation of her soles planting onto the mushy lake bottom.

She looks down between their bodies and for the first time she can judge how short she is beside him. Her knees reach just below his and she has to raise her face a little to see his. He must only be seven or eight inches taller than her. If she dropped her head just a little it would fit perfectly between his neck and shoulder.

Her eyes welled up in a sudden storm of emotion. For the first time since she woke up… she was standing. She almost forgot what the world looked light at her normal eye level.

"See? You are touching the water. Standing too. You're a real…” he trailed off, brows scrunching as he looked down at her for help. “That thing Barton was?"

“A circus freak?”

“Yes. You are a real circus freak now.”

“Yeah.” She chuckles, and it's watery and thick with tears. In the near year since she's been hospitalized no one has ever cared for her enough, wanted to see her happy enough, to carry her the way he was- she felt vulnerable and small as he took on her weight for her.

She looked back up and the tears she let fall for his eyes only.

She didn’t feel any sudden understanding, nothing locked into place, and nothing resonated in her ears. Angels didn’t come down and sing, Beyoncé lyrics didn’t echo from the heavens.

One minute, he’s her best friend. The next… she just knew it.

She was in love with him.


End file.
